Facts like this are what elections are won and lost on. Writing in National Journal, Ron Brownstein observes, “If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.”
There’s a lot riding on the “if” in Brownstein’s sentence, but as he goes on to write it’s actually a reasonably likely scenario that the economy will continue to produce jobs at the current rate. That doesn’t mean the unemployment rate will be at low levels by Election Day, or that the economy will have recovered. But from a political point of view, the perception that things are getting better can be more important to voters than whether things are good yet. And for Republicans that might make all the difference between a healthy gain of something like 20 seats in the House and a blowout win that gives them back the majority.
